Fire and Ice
by Sand-wolf579
Summary: An insight on Mick and Len's thoughts on their preferred elements.
Even when he had been a small child, Mick Rory had had a fascination with fire. The heat. The flames. Everything about it had absolutely captivated him.

Mick's appreciation for fire only grew as he got older. Since the age of ten, Mick had been living on the streets, taking what he needed to survive. It had always been hard, but no times were harder than during the dead of winter, when the nights were long, dark, and cold. It was only thanks to fire and the warmth and light that it provided that Mick had been able to survive those long winters.

Mick hated the winter, and everything associated with it, with a passion. He despised and feared the cold, but that's what happens when one nearly freezes to death. Mick had almost died because of the cold, numerous times, but the warmth of fire had revived him again and again. Fire had given Mick new life, literally.

And people wondered why Mick saw fire as a beautiful thing. Did nobody else see the life that fire provided? In Mick's eyes, fire _was_ life. It was as essential to him as breathing. Mick couldn't survive without fire.

Mick wasn't an idiot though. He was very much aware that when someone plays with fire, they get burned. Fire was a dangerous thing, nobody knew this better than Mick did. He couldn't count the number of times that he'd gotten burned because he'd gotten lost in how mesmerizing the flames were.

Mick had countless burn scars, some worse than others, from when he'd let himself get burned. Many people saw his scars as something ugly, but not Mick. He saw his scars as something to be revered. They were marks given him by the flames, and a constant reminder that fire was powerful, and should be respected as such.

Mick never feared the flames though. Sure, they burned and caused pain if you get too close, but it was almost a good kind of pain. Almost. He certainly prefered burns to all the other types of pain he had to deal with. And, living on the streets, pain had just become a regular part of his life.

On the streets, it was survival of the fittest. Only the strongest ever made it. So Mick had had to toughen himself up. Over the years he grew more and more angry, aggressive, and uncontrollable. Eventually it reached the point that nobody dared mess with him, for fear of getting burned.

Mick had become a very hotheaded person. He was quick to anger, and saw violence as the solution to pretty much everything. Mick was not a good person, and he was just fine with that. He would much rather be a reckless delinquent than be anything like all those self-righteous, cold-hearted bastards that passed him by on the streets every day.

All of those so called 'good people' would see Mick on the streets, sneer in disgust, as if it was his fault he was homeless, and then go on their merry way. If that was what it meant to be one of the good guys, to be a law-abiding citizen, to scoff at or ignore the suffering of people around you, than Mick wanted nothing to do with it.

It wasn't that Mick cared about the people around him, because he really didn't. But if somebody claimed to be a good person, than they had better damn well act like it. That was what Mick believed, that you should be what you say you are.

Mick never claimed to be either a good guy, or a bad guy, because he didn't see himself as either. Alright, on the world's standards, he was a bad guy, because he had an obsession with fire, a love for chaos, and was a thief. But there was more to him than that. Mick didn't go out of his way to hurt or help anybody, not unless they had done something to deserve it. If someone tried to do wrong against him, Mick would burn them. Likewise, if someone did something to help him, Mick would make sure to return to favor.

For the most part though, Mick prefered to stick to himself. He tried not to involve himself with others. Because, in his experience, the majority of the people in the world were cruel and cold, and if there was one thing that Mick had learned in his life, it was this;

Nothing good could ever come from the cold.

* * *

Even when he'd been a little kid, Leonard Snart had never been bothered by the cold. Quite the opposite, in fact, he had found relief and comfort in it.

Len did not grow up in a good home. His father had been the type of man who needed things to be done the way that he wanted them to be done. If things went a way his father didn't like, than the man would get angry. Lewis Snart had a tendency to get physical and violent when he got angry, and Len had the scars to prove it.

Everything Len did seemed to be wrong in his father's eyes, and Len would always be punished for it. His father tried to justify himself, said that he was just teaching his kid a lesson, and for years Len believed him. Len told himself that this was all his fault, that his father wouldn't be punishing him if he did things right. As he grew older though, Len began to recognize the truth.

His father was an abusive man, nothing more.

Over the years of dealing with the pain and abuse, Len began to rely on the cold, in more ways than one. He frequently used ice to sooth his wounds and to bring down the swelling of all the bruises and cuts he got.

Ice was more than just a healing factor to Len, it was a source of happiness. Whenever it was possible, Len would take Lisa to the ice skating rink. Len himself enjoyed skating, but the reason he took them was so he could see the look of pure joy on his little sister's face as she glided gracefully across the ice. In Len's book, anything that brought happiness to Lisa had to be a good thing.

Len would do anything to keep Lisa happy and safe, and he definitely tried his best. There had been a countless number of times when Len had deflected his father's anger towards Lisa so that it was instead directed at him. Len took on Lisa's punishments willingly because, as her older brother, it was his job to keep her safe.

One of the worst punishments Len had ever received from his father had been for Lisa, and she was completely unaware of it. It had been a cold winter night. Even in their house, the temperature was still close to freezing. Len barely minded the cold, but Lisa...she had already been sick, and her illness would have just gotten worse if she had to bare through the cold.

So Len had tried to turn up the temperature in the house by turning on the heaters. Lewis had not been happy about this at all. Like Len, Lewis wasn't too bothered by the cold, so, in most cases, he kept their heaters off, because Lewis wasn't about to pay money for additional heat if they didn't need it.

When Lewis had realized what Len had done he had been absolutely furious. Lewis had grabbed Len, shoved him against the now on and hot heater, and held him there. All to teach his son what would happen if he tried to waste heat and money like that again.

Because of the awful burn he'd gotten on his back that night, not to mention all the countless smaller, though still painful burns from all the times Lewis had used Len's arms to put out a cigarette, Len came to associate heat with pain.

'In the heat of the moment' was a term that Len grew to be very familiar with. The saying pretty much summed up most every single time his father punished him. Lewis snart was an impulsive man who acted rashly and never seemed to stop to think about what he was doing.

And Len didn't want to be anything like him.

Instead, Len became calm, cool, and collected. He always stopped to think about any possible outcome before making a decision. He calculated everything. Basically, Len had become the opposite of a heated, angry person. At the same time though, Len had stopped himself from becoming a warm person either.

Len had hardened his heart. He figured that if he never let anybody in, they would never get the chance to hurt him. Len also avoided working with irrational violent people when he could, because Len learned early on that associating with people like that only ended up with you getting burned,

And nothing good ever came from the heat.


End file.
